


Greek Chorus

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Am I Doing Soulbonding Right, Jokes, Lion Mindmeld, M/M, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 09:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15704730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Mmf," said Shiro, catching crumbs with his robot hand, and then he chewed and swallowed and looked arrested. "Wow, that's really good." He looked around at them all and said, "Do you guys realise you're not talking when you do that?"





	Greek Chorus

Voltron was different since the battle for Earth. Stronger. Realer. It felt less and less like five lions that became one warrior, and more and more like one warrior that was happy to be temporarily split into five lions.

It spilled over to the five of them, too. Even when they weren't in sync during a battle their bond hummed away like a waiting engine. It wasn't like it had been in the early days, when Keith opened up to Red and Red connected up to the rest of the lions and only then, distantly, could Keith feel the other pilots. Now they were just all open to each other all the time. If Keith woke up in the middle of the night feeling edgy, he'd come downstairs and Lance would be already on the training mats with his bayard in hand waiting. If Hunk had something really delicious in mind for dinner, the whole team would be in the kitchen before he'd even started cooking. Hunk had only looked surprised the first time. Now he just went with it, passing people vegetables to chop and holding out his hand for a whisk without looking round.

"Uh," said Shiro one time, standing in the doorway staring.

"Hi, Shiro, try this," said Hunk, and shoved a cupcake into his mouth.

"Mmf," said Shiro, catching crumbs with his robot hand, and then he chewed and swallowed and looked arrested. "Wow, that's  _really_ good." He looked around at them all and said, "Do you guys realise you're not talking when you do that?"

"Do what?" said Lance.

"We're talking," said Keith.

"I  _think_ we're talking," said Allura.

"We're not," said Pidge. "Not out loud, anyway."

"Oh yeah, I noticed that," Hunk said. "It's not even like having sous chefs, it's more like just eight extra hands. It's cool!"

Keith looked around at the kitchen suddenly seeing it. The cupcakes were the last thing: there was soup and a tray of tarts on the stove, a trussed-up chicken just out of the oven, beautifully presented dishes of chopped and roasted vegetables, fancy rice and potatoes in cream and three different salads, dumplings in the steamer, spreads of side dishes which were basically just whatever had occurred to Hunk when he looked in the fridge –

He was completely sure that Hunk had made all of it, and at the same time he  _remembered_ his own hand cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. Keith had lived on ready meals most of his life. He  _could_ crack an egg, but not usually one-handed, and definitely not without looking.

They all exchanged glances, and then Keith felt the collective shrug go through all of them: who  _cared_ , it smelled  _amazing_.

"Wow," Shiro said softly, and Keith worried for a second he felt shut out – but no, he was smiling, a little impressed, a little disbelieving. "I'm so proud of you guys. Just look how deep your bond is now. You've come a really long way."

And then they ate the food, since they'd  _made_ it, and it  _was_ amazing, so that was pretty cool. Shiro had about six more cupcakes. Pidge ended up hoarding a little pile to protect them from him.

In battle they moved clean, fast, devastating. Voltron was a lot faster than the Atlas, even though Atlas was being steered by one mind instead of five. Pidge theorised that splitting the neural load meant reaction times got cut because of localised something something something; Keith didn't need to understand it to feel it. They were working on how to use the two warriors together effectively. Atlas didn't  _need_ to be fast, really, given how massive it was, so long as Voltron covered the angles of approach long enough to let it line up one of its shattering blows.

Basically there were lots of advantages to the team being in each other's heads pretty much full-time, and only one disadvantage.

It was a  _big_  disadvantage, though.

 

" _Lance, no,_ " the whole team chorused the first time Lance got distracted thinking about Allura's pretty hair during a fight and Atlas knocked them sideways. They'd taken to facing off against each other for training. Voltron was good practice for Shiro trying to keep up with the zippy and deadly Altean mechs that kept appearing out of nowhere. Going up against Atlas was good practice for Voltron in turn. They needed to be better at managing enemies with lots of firepower.

"What was that?" snapped Shiro over the comm.

"Nothing," said Keith. Lance's embarrassment and apology were flooding the bond so hard that everyone was blushing. "Minor issue. We've got it handled."

 _Thank you, though!_  Allura thought at Lance. She was by far the best at getting clear words through the mind link.

Lance thought  _sorry sorry sorry!_ again, and Keith said, trying not to grin, "Comms not brain voice for combat, guys, and flirt in your own time." Then he flicked the channel back over to Atlas. "Sorry about that. We're ready for you. Let's run it again."

After that they were all more careful about letting personal stuff bleed over. Allura ran some Altean meditation sessions for the team and they worked on creating what she called 'closed doors' in their thoughts – private spaces where they could keep the stuff they didn't want to share. Pidge got it the fastest, and they all felt it when she did. Keith hadn't realised how much of a shadow in the bond her lingering guilt was: she'd abandoned her mother, she'd failed for so long to find her brother and father, her family still worried about her, they wished she'd come home for good –

He awkwardly took her aside for a talk. He still didn't think of himself as any good at that stuff, but it was on him to do it, and if there was anyone who understood going crazy and blowing up your life after the Kerberos mission disappeared, it was him. He thought it helped? He didn't say anything that wasn't true: they  _did_ need her, she  _was_ the smartest person on the team, they  _would_ all have been dead several times over by now without their Green Paladin.

 

The next time they were training as a team Keith knew Pidge had cheered up. Green was crisper, sharper, faster than ever, and the sensors-and-analysis work she did controlling Voltron's defence systems was on a whole different level. Even if he hadn't had all that obvious evidence in front of him he still would have known from the cheerful zip of her presence in the bond.

It was because the buzz of Pidge's genius in his brain was in such a good mood – because it felt  _specifically_ and  _directedly_ warm towards Keith himself – that Keith was taken completely by surprise. They were in the middle of running away as fast as possible from Atlas's terrifying blast beam when Pidge said brightly over the comms,"So, I think we should talk about Keith's Shiro thing!"

"What?" said Keith, and nearly got them all slagged. "Pidge. Focus."

"I could do this in my sleep," said Pidge, and she wasn't even lying. She had the shield up as Voltron ducked and rolled and she'd figured out a reflecting trick pretty much on the fly which meant that Atlas was the one who took the hit. "Who else was surprised?"

"I was pretty surprised," said Hunk, because Hunk  _always_ backed Pidge up. Keith gritted his teeth. This wasn't fair. This wasn't  _team_.

"I was shocked," said Allura. "Truly."

"C'mon, guys, don't be mean to Keith," said Lance, which – Keith knew it was bad when  _Lance_ felt sorry for him. Then he added lightly, "But yeah, honestly, I was surprised too."

Keith said nothing. He focused on the closed doors in his mind like Allura had taught him, and on the  _fight_ that he was  _taking seriously_ unlike the rest of them. Atlas was trying to pin them against a cliff; Keith ducked under its arm and went high behind it, aiming a kick at its head.

"Aw, Keith, don't be like that, we're not being mean," said Hunk, and here was the problem with having everyone in everyone's head all the time: Keith knew they weren't. Of course they weren't. He hated it. This thing – the  _Shiro thing_ , and having it reduced to something that small-sounding stung more than Keith would ever have expected – was no one else's business. He didn't want anyone to be nice to him about it. He didn't want to think about it at all. He'd always known it was hopeless.

"Wait, what?" said Lance.

"Just don't," said Keith tiredly, and then, " _Form sword!"_

While they all grunted, straining, under the weight of Atlas bearing down across the blade, the tenor of the bond changed. All four of the others were projecting at Keith – not words or thoughts, but a wash of emotion that made his shoulders loosen up and his face soften out of a grimace despite how pissed off he was with his whole stupid psychic team right now. They hadn't meant to upset him. They cared because he was their leader, and their friend. They loved him.

Keith found a reserve of strength in Voltron he hadn't known was there and sprung upwards underneath their straining sword. Atlas went  _back_ and then  _down_ and they dove head-first after it and got the sword jammed right into its neck joint before Shiro could recover.

"Nice one, guys," said Shiro over the comm after a moment. "Let's call it there."

"Roger that," said Keith. He could imagine the expression on Shiro's face just fine, the mingled irritation at losing the bout and pride in the rest of them for winning it. It would come out as a sharp little smile, a hint of competitive spark in his eyes.

" _Keith_ ," said all four of the others at once, and Keith slammed a series of mental doors shut and said quietly, "Sorry, guys."

 

Pidge caught up with him in the Atlas's hangar bay once they were out of their lions and said, "Keith –"

"It's fine," said Keith. Pidge had made it to him first but the other three were closing in. He did not want to do this at all. He thought about that very emphatically at all of them. He got a united front of  _tough luck_ in return: apparently everyone else thought they _needed_ to do this. What the hell for? And didn't being the leader count for anything?

Apparently not. Lance fell in on Pidge's left and Allura and Hunk took the right and they frogmarched Keith back to team quarters together. They got as far as the lounge. Then Lance leaned on the door to block his escape route and Allura looked earnest and Hunk was obviously  _this close_ to giving Keith a  _bro hug_ , and Pidge said, "Keith, we were  _surprised_  because right up until this whole alien mindmeld thing got serious literally everyone thought you guys were already dating."

" – what?" said Keith.

"Well," said Allura, "not quite. I actually thought you were heart-pledged in a mutual bond of lifelong affection."

Keith stared at her. He could tell that meant  _Altean married_ even without the shadow-memory of Allura's parents ghosting through the bond at him.

"When a guy drops out of the Galaxy Garrison because he's that devastated by another guy disappearing and then spends years being crazy in the desert about it and then when he sees that guy again after dramatically rescuing him basically the first thing they do is go outside together to stare lovingly at each other during a romantic sunrise, I guess people kind of make assumptions!" said Hunk. When Keith swung his stare onto him he spread his hands out helplessly. "I'm just saying! We assumed!"

"Hey, I didn't assume," said Lance. "Not  _then_." He paused. "Afterwards, though, yeah, definitely."

"I think by the time you were throwing Black through a closing wormhole into the heart of the Galra fleet all by yourself to save him, we  _all_ assumed," said Pidge.

"But I'd do that for any of you," Keith said.

There was a pause. The bond told Keith they all knew he meant it. He didn't get what else there was to say. He didn't see why they'd had to talk about this in the first place.

"All right, fine," he said. "I've got feelings for Shiro." Ugh, what was he, a coward? "I'm in love with Shiro," he corrected. "I guess. But that's not how things are, all right? So  _please_ just – drop it," and his voice cracked embarrassingly on  _please_. "We're like brothers. That's enough for me."

"Oh, wow, you actually said that to him," said Hunk, because Keith was  _not_ doing so great at the mental doors thing. "Wow. You did that."

"This makes me feel better about myself, guys," said Lance. "I've made mistakes! One time I got tied to a tree and my date stole my lion! But at least I've never told a girl I was into that she was like a  _sister_ to me." He paused. "Maybe because I actually have a sister. Eurgh."

Keith glowered at him.

"Keith," said Allura, "why are you so certain that's  _not how things are?_ " She'd moved when he wasn't paying attention and now she was sitting next to him on the couch. She took Keith's hand and patted it. Everyone was watching him with concern and affection. This entire experience was going straight into Keith's mental bank of  _worst memories_ right behind thinking Shiro was dead and having to play Space Pictionary that one time.

He didn't even try to answer Allura's question. He didn't need to; a quick flicker of old memories had rippled through the bond the moment she spoke. Keith a dumbass kid who'd belonged in juvie, not the Garrison. Shiro older and wiser and always so goddamn _good_ to him.

"Okay, yeah, I get _then_ ," said Hunk, "obviously it wasn't gonna be a thing _then_ , but like –"

"Hunk," said Keith, because he couldn't take this. Not even from his team.

Hunk stopped talking. Keith breathed out.

Even the bond had drawn back from him a bit, which he was grateful for. He loved his team, but some things you just had to hold to yourself and never talk about. That was just how it _was –_ how it had always been, for Keith's whole life, with Shiro himself as the only exception.

"You know,  _I_ have a brother," said Pidge into the awkward silence.

Keith looked at her in surprise. Her mental doors had cracked a little, the way she'd stopped letting them as soon as she worked out how. Keith would have guessed at Pidge being the person who _most_ understood why some things didn't need sharing.

Pidge just smiled faintly. The way she was standing, the light off her glasses obscured her eyes. "I have a brother. I'd go to the ends of the universe for him. Actually, I  _did_. I'd do it again. And I'd die for my brother. I'd kill for my brother." She was letting the emotion loose behind the words: they could all feel how much she meant it. "But do you know what I  _wouldn't_  do? I wouldn't tenderly cradle Matt in my arms for ages while gazing deeply into his eyes thinking about how beautiful they are. Because that would be  _pretty weird, Keith._ "

Keith flushed. "I know –" he began.

"I definitely wouldn't do it more than once," Pidge went on ruthlessly. "And more importantly? _He_ wouldn't  _let me._ "

Keith didn't say anything. The team's bond was full of enormous expectancy as everyone looked at him. He tried to ignore it.

"Your bond with Shiro runs very deep," Allura said at last. She was still holding Keith's hand. Allura was holding Keith's hand and Lance wasn't even giving him evil looks about it. This situation was out of control. "Perhaps it is hard for you to see what we all see. But you should trust us, Keith."

"Yeah, Shiro loves you," said Hunk. He looked around at their faces. "What? It's obvious. Are we not allowed to say obvious stuff now?"

"No!" said Lance. "You'll jinx him! Romance is delicate, guys, you have to let people find their own way. Trust me. I'm a natural at love."

Keith shoved the bond full of every dumbass thing he had ever seen Lance do over a girl –  _including_ the Allura's-pretty-hair incident. He said flatly, "Really."

Lance turned pink as Pidge snorted and Hunk covered his laugh with a cough. But then he glanced at Allura and relaxed again. Keith had thought the two of them were kind of cute until now. If he'd realised they were going to  _gang up on him_ he wouldn't have been so tolerant. He thought his irritation at them as viciously as he could and it just made Allura pat his hand again. This was  _worse_ than Space Pictionary.

"Well," was all Lance said, "Shiro's probably not going to tie you to a tree and steal your lion, so why not take a chance?"

"Shut it," said Keith.

"I'm just saying," Lance said. "What are you, scared?"

"I'm not _scared_ –"

"Wow, I don't believe it," said Hunk. "He's scared."

"Yeah, who are you and what have you done with Keith?" said Pidge.

"I'm not scared!"

Allura grabbed his other hand, stared deep into his eyes, gave him a brilliant merciless smile, and said, "Prove it."

 

Keith managed to escape them somehow, and then he stalked away from Paladin quarters altogether. He wasn't going to take his team's stupid dare, and he wasn't, and he _wasn't_ , and in fact he wasn't even thinking about it, and he wasn't thinking about it so hard that he took himself straight to Shiro's quarters and knocked.

The bond gave a little trill of enthusiasm and then a squawk which was Pidge physically sitting on Allura and hissing, "Give him space!"

Keith rolled his eyes. He thought very hard about rolling his eyes, too, in case they missed it. They probably _did_ miss it, because his brain-sense of all four of them had drawn back, veiled and distant, which was Allura's annoyingly precise Altean control at work steering the other three. It was basically exactly like having all his friends standing a few feet away pointedly looking in the other direction and whistling.

"Did I do something?" said Shiro in front of him, framed in the doorway, because – right, Keith had knocked and then immediately started pulling annoyed faces.

"Sorry," said Keith. "Not you." He jerked his head vaguely in the direction he'd come.

"The team?" Shiro said, grinning. He was in his shirt sleeves.

"You got out just in time," Keith told him. "I love them, but they're driving me nuts. Can I come in?"

Shiro stepped back and gestured. Keith came up here plenty of evenings – maybe more evenings than not, actually. After combat training they needed to talk over what had gone right and wrong and plan what came next – well, technically they did that in the official debriefing with the whole team and all of Atlas's bridge crew there, but somehow Keith and Shiro always ended up thinking of more things to say to each other about it later. And then that turned into chewing over the whole day, and if either of them ever had a problem without a solution they'd take it to the other one to talk through. It was just their friendship, same as always. It was who they were.

Shiro had some personal touches in the Atlas's grey-and-orange command suite. There were a bunch of little model ships set out on a shelf, with a toy Black among them as a joke, and a framed photo of all seven of their Castle of Lions crew on the wall. His grey jacket was hung over the back of a chair, and the hat he was technically supposed to wear but hardly ever did flung on a desk next to the console he'd been working at. Shiro left to himself basically never stopped working, which was another reason Keith was here more evenings than not. A person could drive themselves crazy that way. Everyone needed downtime sometimes.

"What's up?" said Shiro. "Voltron seemed a little off today, but you guys pulled it together hard in the end. That last strike was spectacular. And your defences had a flow to them all along that I've never seen before. What you said to Pidge must have really helped her."

Keith smiled, proud despite what Pidge had pulled on him in return. "Yeah, she was amazing."

"So." Shiro flung himself down on the orange couch in the usual comfortable sprawl they both ended up in on evenings like this and grinned up at him. "What can I do for you, Black Paladin?"

"Captain," Keith replied, dry and amused.

Hunk somewhere in the back of his head said, _Do they really not know they're flirting?_ and got firmly shushed and dragged back behind Allura's privacy veil by all the others. Keith winced. Shiro looked confused.

"Keith?" he said.

And abruptly Keith was done hesitating.

It wasn't because his team had dared him. It wasn't because he was tired of being an emo asshole about the whole thing. It wasn't even because there were five people in Keith's head and four of them were absolutely convinced that Shiro loved him too. It was just that Shiro was in front of him, alive and well and _happy_. He was happy in a way Keith hadn't seen him in years. He was excited about how they were all improving, he was stealing all the cupcakes at team dinner, he was fierce and gleeful and competitive about Atlas taking on Voltron – about _Shiro_ taking on _Keith._ He had a room, one that looked like someone lived in it. He had a room that belonged to a man who was planning to keep being alive.

So Keith gave in and kissed him.

Shiro kissed him back right off. He didn't hesitate. He didn't even seem surprised. Keith could taste his smile. He was about to pull back and say something like, _I guess we should talk_ – because sometimes you _did_ need to talk about things – when Shiro's hands caught at Keith's waist and pulled him down on top of him on the orange couch.

The kiss didn't break. It went hot.

Keith decided he didn't care about talking just now.

A few minutes later the air of looking-away-and-whistling coming from the bond broke just long enough for Lance to say, _so do you think he – whoa!_

Keith sat back across Shiro's thighs with a hand braced on Shiro's chest and said firmly, "Get out." He glanced down at Shiro – pink in the face, bangs dishevelled, staring up at him – and added, "Not you."

His sense of the other Paladins had already gone determinedly dim – not just looking away and whistling, but actually on the other side of some closed doors. Keith closed a few of his own to be sure. Shiro laughed up at him, breathless. "I guessed," he said. "Anyway I can't get out. You're on top of me. And these are my rooms." His eyes were crinkled at the corners as he smiled up at Keith. They were beautiful and Keith didn't care what Pidge thought about him thinking it. "Can I ask why now?"

Keith said, "You have a toy Black on a display shelf. Allura thought we were Altean married. I don't know."

"Altean – wow. Wow, Keith, that's fast."

"I'm not _hinting_ ," Keith said scornfully. "When I ask you to marry me, you'll know about it."

Shiro's lips parted. He nodded a little, cheeks pinker than ever. Then he caught Keith's face in his hands and dragged his mouth back down.

 

 _Are they still_ , Pidge thought quite a lot later, and then, disgusted, _oh come on._

Keith mentally scheduled in a lot more Altean meditation practice for all of them, shoved her firmly out of his head, and got back to what he was doing.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://emilyenrose.tumblr.com).


End file.
